Page 71 of Vow to Claim You

Ayanna stands there like she doesn’t know what to do with her own body, her hand trembling at her side. Mine is still at her back.

“My son loved you,” the woman spits at Ayanna, desperate, the accusation fraying. “And marrying him”—the finger swings to me—“is what brought death into his life.”

Tassilo shifts behind me, and a minimal shake of my head stops him.

“You’re putting your son in the ground today.” My voice stays flat. “So I’ll choose to overlook this.”

“You destroyed him,” she breathes. “My son is dead. That’s the only thing that’s true.”

Technically?

I did.

I took his eyes. I put a bullet and fear into him. I made sure he’d never look at Ayanna again.

And if given the choice, I’d do it all over again.

But I didn’t kill him.

And whoever arranged that recording wanted the world to forget the difference. Someone wanted to pin it on me. On the Volds. On the alliance itself.

I thought burying Luca would close a door.

Instead, someone just kicked it open.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Ayanna

Idon’t remember getting into the car. Everything happened so fast. And the chaos that erupted was overwhelming. One moment, I was standing over Luca’s coffin while his voice ripped my grief open in front of two hundred strangers; the next, I’m in the back of the SUV, Monsera sliding past the window, and Luca is still talking.

He won’t stop talking.

If anyone tells you I chose this, don’t believe them.

I still love you.

I hope he gives you the life I couldn’t.

His voice loops until I can’t tell whether I’m remembering it or inventing it.

Aric sits beside me like a wall of black and silence, giving me the space he always somehow knows to give. Up front, the driver says nothing. No one does. There’s only the engine and Luca’s voice in my mind.

Don’t believe them.

Believe who, then?

I can’t stop circling the same thought. Because the version of events everyone believes—the one etched across every face at the graveside, the one Luca’s mother spat at me like it was fact—ends with one man.

Aric.

I know what he did to Luca. He sent him home blind, scarred and broken. A warning no one could mistake, and I should hate him for it.

I think a part of me does.

“Do you need anything?” Aric’s voice snaps me out of my reverie.

I should say no. Look out the window. Let the question rot in my chest the way I’ve let everything rot lately.